Great, but not Good

Cafe Society
1

Orwell famously wrote about ‘good bad books’ and ‘good bad poetry’, which wasn’t about anything camp or otherwise ‘so bad it’s good’ but about works executed with technical competence that express some commonplace idea or sentiment about as well as it can be expressed. Kipling was the example Orwell used; a good bit of popular music now falls into this category, and always has. ‘Good bad’ works are Good but not Great. They can never aspire to Greatness no matter how popular they are or how competent their execution.

I’m looking for the inversion of this: Works that are Great, undeniably so, but not Good in any reasonable sense. The works that remind us that the canon is not a popularity contest, or a greatest hits compilation. Metropolis is an example: It is a Great Film with archetypes instead of characters, overblown emotionalism, a plot scrawled on a napkin, and the worst kind of sententious ending possible in the medium of film. If it were not a Great Film it would be justifiably forgotten today. Lord of the Flies is a Great Novel but any Goodness it may have had is beaten out of it by repeated blunt metaphor trauma. Any further examples?

2

I find Moby Dick to be great(what an achievement), but not good.

3

I don’t have any, but I love “blunt metaphor trauma.” I’m going to find a way to work that into a conversation.

4

Oh yes, especially due to the fact it has within it, like a tumor promising to metastasize, the beginnings of a textbook on cetacean biology.

SpazCat: Thank you.

5

It has been a while since I read them, so my memory may be faulty, but I am tempted to place the Foundation trilogy here. Asimov is a great writer, but with these works I think he became too involved with the overarching mythos and “Psychohistory” and allowed them to overshadow the individual stories within that mythos.

Which I suppose is part of the problem of ‘psychohistory’ itself - when everything can be determined precisely at the macro level, the problems of the lower levels become meaningless since they will have no bearing on the macro predictions.

6

I really liked Moby Dick and Lord of the Flies. I found the process of early 19th century whaling unbelievably fascinating. I guess I’m a nerd.

Continuing in the “I’m a nerd vein,” I think the original Star Trek television series might count. It paved the way for lots of sci-fi tv and film, and for the 60s it’s message of “In the future Russians and Americans and blacks and Jews who overact will all get along,” was fairly pertinent. That being said, the show itself has some obvious short comings, especially to a contemporary viewer.

7

Haha, once again, I liked Moby Dick, but that really made me laugh.

TvTropes actually says that Blunt Metaphor Trauma means something different than your usage of the term. However, I like your usage better.